Where We Began

chapter thirty-six

Cole's POV

We need to talk. Those four words have a history of ending too many relationships. The preamble to the break up. Four words I didn't think I would hear from Brooke yet here we are. She's sitting in my lap with her hands against my chest drawing little circles like she does when she's nervous or stalling. I look down at her, willing her to meet my gaze with her beautiful green eyes, but she doesn't.

"What do we need to talk about?" I ask gently as I tip her chin up so I can take in her beauty.

"Let's go to a room first," she says, sliding off my lap and taking my hand to lead me down the hall and into one of the guest rooms.

"This bed is amazing," I say, falling back onto what feels like a cloud.

"Cole, do you remember when I was dating Riley?" She asks as she sat criss cross beside me on the bed.

"Yeah," I said, confused about why he mattered right now, as I rolled on my side to face her with my hand propping up my head, "You never brought him around us tho."

"I know," she sighed looking down at her hands, "he wasn't who I thought he was or who I said he was."

"What do you mean?" I asked, reaching up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

"His name wasn't Riley," she said, finally meeting my eyes as I noticed the tears threatening to fall from hers. "He didn't want anyone to know about us because he thought it would make me look bad or so he said."

I sat up as I reached to pull her to me but she caught my hands and held them in her lap. At this moment I didn't care who Riley was. All I wanted was to hold her and tell her it was okay as she cried but something told me to wait. I had a gut feeling there was so much more to the story she was about to tell me. A story, I'm sure, she wanted to tell for a while but has been too scared to trust anyone with the truth that has her so broken. I wiped a tear from her cheek as she took a deep breath and closed her eyes to rest her cheek against my hand.

"Brooke you know you can tell me anything," I said quietly stroking my thumb across her cheek as she opened her bright green eyes, "I'm not going anywhere."

"He hurt me, Cole," she said, her voice filling with acid instead of sorrow, "He came to me when I was at my lowest and promised to be my shoulder to cry on. I believed him because I was young and naive. We had been friends as kids and even when we were in school together he was always nice."

She paused, looking off and biting her lip as if she was trying to decide if she wanted to share more. Normally her lip biting would turn me into a rock but at this moment the only thing I felt was rage. She hadn't finished her story but just knowing I had shared the same school with this asshole that had preyed on her when she was going through the worst time of her life then betrayed and broke her was enough to make me want to hunt him down. Even if people left for college they came back so there was a good chance he was here or would be this summer at least.

"He knew I had never done anything sexual with anyone and he promised he wouldn't try to change that unless I was ready. One night he had taken me home when he stopped at the end of moms dirt road and started kissing me. Before I knew it was happening, he drug me into the backseat and pinned me underneath him," Brooke started to talk faster like if she didn't she would break down and not finish, "I tried to wiggle loose underneath his weight but he was much stronger than me. He ripped my shorts off and pinned me down as I begged him to stop. He didn't listen tho."

She paused to take a breath and wipe the tears from her eyes. I was too stunned to say anything so I sat waiting for her to finish the story with my hand still resting on her knee. I never knew this is what she was hiding from me. She had said she hated him and he was an ass but this was beyond that. He was a piece of absolute shit and I vowed, if I ever found him, I would make him regret even thinking about touching her.

"He forced himself into my mouth while holding onto my hair and laughing. First he just forced his fingers inside me," she continued in an empty tone looking at the wall as tears silently cascaded down her cheeks, "but then when he pulled his fingers out he shoved himself inside me as rough as he could while still laughing as I screamed at the pain. I somehow managed to kick him in the nose and escape while he was stunned. I ran to my mom's house half naked in the dark and cried on the bathroom floor until Shelby found me."

"It's okay baby," I whispered, moving to sit against the headboard and pull her into my lap so I could hold her, "I'm here."

This time she didn't pull away but instead buried her face in my chest and cried as I stroked her hair. My mind was reeling as I tried to figure out who Riley really was. We had all gone to school together so I thought back to when Brooke said she was done with Riley. It was around late October of our Junior year when she showed up to Zane's crying and downed half a bottle of Jack before any of us could grab it from her. I should have known something beyond her cover of her feeling sad about her father passing earlier that summer was bothering her but I didn't push her. Instead I let her cry against me like she is now and told her it was all okay. If only I would have known how not okay she really was. The next day she didn't go to school with us because she said she had a family thing. Now I know she just didn't want to face him, whoever he was. She quit the football team later that week and avoided that side of campus even when we were supposed to meet up with Zane after practice. I would always find her across campus in the gym parking lot instead of by the field house. Football. The field house. Who was on the team that year that was at the fight tonight? Fuck.

"Henley," I said finally realizing why tonight had set off this snowball of emotions, "Riley was Henley."

She looked up at me at the mention of his name. Her eyes were bright green rimmed in red from all the tears she had cried yet she was still so beautiful. She nodded her head at my realization as I closed my eyes to calm myself. I should've ended that prick tonight.